holy slow sudo port install mod_ruby
Every time I challenge the silicon gods by installing yet another demanding software package on my powerbook G3 I always start by consciously dismissing the age and condition of the laptop. The machine is 6 years old, has 386mb of ram, a 9 gig hard drive, a 500mHz processor, and a first generation airport card. After installing tiger and developer tools there is a little under 2gb of disk space left.
There is a ghost impression of the keyboard etched into the surface of the LCD screen from the oil left on the keys by my fingers. I have dropped, sat on, stepped on, rolled over, spit on, slammed shut, forced open, poked, prodded, wedged, and pried loose this poor machine during the 6 years, 2 SXSW’s, many business trips, not as many vacations, and 6 operating system upgrades of it’s life.
Every time I do something beyond surf the web on grandpa pismo and it doesn’t start smoking or tell me to hold the power button down in 5 different languages I experience a trepid euphoria not unlike that experienced by a man who only hears the metallic click of the firing pin during a game of russian roulette.
Around minute 30 of hour 2 of installing mod_ruby using darwin ports (just to see if I could) I started to get nervous. I was using a wireless connection, the elderly (original) battery was at 50% and sinking and I was having a hard time staying awake. it was 2:30 a.m. which is actually 3:30 am to my internal clock seeing as we’re only a few days in to the daylight savings time switch.
Being the dedicated, task focused person I am I… fell asleep.
I have yet to assess the outcome of this latest haphazard command line escapade.